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Our journey back to Spain – part one

I think it is safe to say that things rarely go to plan when you put me, hubby and two cats into a car and then hitch a caravan onto the back of it!

Now it’s not that we don’t plan for our travels as we do. Campsites are selected and rejected until we find something that suits most of our criteria. Maps are then printed off and cross-referenced with the main map in the car.

Provisions are made for the car and the cats fed, watered and toileted before they go into their cat baskets with the added precaution of a bed liner incase of accidents. A liberal amount of ‘feliway’ (the cat version of rescue remedy) is then sprayed around said basket and the back of the car to calm them. Not altogether sure it works but gives me peace of mind to use it!!

With all this organisation you could be mistaken for thinking that our journey back to Spain was a smooth one but my friends you would be wrong; oh so very wrong………

5 days, 7 campsites, 3 ‘accidents’ courtesy of Oscar and many arguments later we are only just waking up without the dread of another day in the car.

So what went so wrong…………

We left Portugal in a blaze of sunshine and a flurry of farewells and headed off to the border 20 miles away to fill up with petrol. Less than 5 minutes down the road I realised that Oscar had had the first of his 3 indiscressions but being an old hand at traveling with cats I managed to sort the situation and by the time we arrived at the petrol station he was fast asleep.

The journey down to Sevilla went well with us sharing the driving and joking and singing away to our favourite CD’s.

Trouble began as we tried to locate our campsite. Unfortunately road names on the maps didn’t correspond with road names in reality and there were junctions where there shouldn’t be and basically it all went belly up.

Trying to navigate when you haven’t really a clue where you are with a 37ft rig is a stressful experience for all concerned but somehow I managed to get us to the right place. We were on a small dual carriage way and coming down the wrong side for where the campsite should be. As we passed the sign I could see that there was a big steel gate to the entrance which looked locked up.

Hubby parked up and I ran back to investigate. Not good news……the campsite was derelict 😦

Onto plan B and the only other campsite our side of Sevilla which very luckily was in the same town.

The luck stopped there though as after two rounds of the directions in the camping book we were no closer to finding it.

It was getting late and so we pulled over to decide what to do. Our only real option was to carry on down to Cadiz; another 100km and stay at the same campsite that we had in May.

At this point I noticed a man walking towards the car. Being the suspicious Londoner that I am I hissed at hubby to lock the doors. Of course he did the opposite and opened his door to speak to him. ‘Are you looking for the campsite’ the chap said ‘ yes’ came the eager reply from hubby. The chap then proceeded to give us directions off around the next corner and within 5 minutes we were pulled up in front of Camping Villsom with big relieved sighs on our faces……….

An hour or so later with food in our bellies, beer in our glasses and two happier cats curled up on the bed our first day of traveling drew to a close.